To the Workingmen of America...

It was four o’clock when the ceremony was over and the carriages began to arrive. There had been a crowd following all the way, owing to the exuberance of Marija Berczynskas. The occasion rested heavi...

Jurgis talked lightly about work, because he was young. They told him stories about the breaking down of men, there in the stockyards of Chicago, and of what had happened to them afterwards⁠—stories t...

In his capacity as delicatessen vender, Jokubas Szedvilas had many acquaintances. Among these was one of the special policemen employed by Durham, whose duty it frequently was to pick out men for empl...

Promptly seven the next morning Jurgis reported for work. He came to the door that had been pointed out to him, and there he waited for nearly two hours. The boss had meant for him to enter, but had n...

They had bought their home. It was hard for them to realize that the wonderful house was theirs to move into whenever they chose. They spent all their time thinking about it, and what they were going ...

Jurgis and Ona were very much in love; they had waited a long time⁠—it was now well into the second year, and Jurgis judged everything by the criterion of its helping or hindering their union. All his...

All summer long the family toiled, and in the fall they had money enough for Jurgis and Ona to be married according to home traditions of decency. In the latter part of November they hired a hall, and...

Yet even by this deadly winter the germ of hope was not to be kept from sprouting in their hearts. It was just at this time that the great adventure befell Marija. The victim was Tamoszius Kuszleika, ...

One of the first consequences of the discovery of the union was that Jurgis became desirous of learning English. He wanted to know what was going on at the meetings, and to be able to take part in the...

During the early part of the winter the family had had money enough to live and a little over to pay their debts with; but when the earnings of Jurgis fell from nine or ten dollars a week to five or s...

During the summer the packinghouses were in full activity again, and Jurgis made more money. He did not make so much, however, as he had the previous summer, for the packers took on more hands. There ...

For three weeks after his injury Jurgis never got up from bed. It was a very obstinate sprain; the swelling would not go down, and the pain still continued. At the end of that time, however, he could ...

During this time that Jurgis was looking for work occurred the death of little Kristoforas, one of the children of Teta Elzbieta. Both Kristoforas and his brother, Juozapas, were cripples, the latter ...

With one member trimming beef in a cannery, and another working in a sausage factory, the family had a firsthand knowledge of the great majority of Packingtown swindles. For it was the custom, as they...

The beginning of these perplexing things was in the summer; and each time Ona would promise him with terror in her voice that it would not happen again⁠—but in vain. Each crisis would leave Jurgis mor...

When Jurgis got up again he went quietly enough. He was exhausted and half dazed, and besides he saw the blue uniforms of the policemen. He drove in a patrol wagon with half a dozen of them watching h...

At seven o’clock the next morning Jurgis was let out to get water to wash his cell⁠—a duty which he performed faithfully, but which most of the prisoners were accustomed to shirk, until their cells be...

Jurgis did not get out of the Bridewell quite as soon as he had expected. To his sentence there were added “court costs” of a dollar and a half⁠—he was supposed to pay for the trouble of putting him i...

“Madame Haupt, Hebamme,” ran a sign, swinging from a second-story window over a saloon on the avenue; at a side door was another sign, with a hand pointing up a dingy flight of steps. Jurgis went up t...

But a big man cannot stay drunk very long on three dollars. That was Sunday morning, and Monday night Jurgis came home, sober and sick, realizing that he had spent every cent the family owned, and had...

That was the way they did it! There was not half an hour’s warning⁠—the works were closed! It had happened that way before, said the men, and it would happen that way forever. They had made all the ha...

Jurgis took the news in a peculiar way. He turned deadly pale, but he caught himself, and for half a minute stood in the middle of the room, clenching his hands tightly and setting his teeth. Then he ...

Early in the fall Jurgis set out for Chicago again. All the joy went out of tramping as soon as a man could not keep warm in the hay; and, like many thousands of others, he deluded himself with the ho...

In the face of all his handicaps, Jurgis was obliged to make the price of a lodging, and of a drink every hour or two, under penalty of freezing to death. Day after day he roamed about in the arctic c...

Jurgis got up, wild with rage; but the door was shut and the great castle was dark and impregnable. Then the icy teeth of the blast bit into him, and he turned and went away at a run. When he stopped ...

After the elections Jurgis stayed on in Packingtown and kept his job. The agitation to break up the police protection of criminals was continuing, and it seemed to him best to “lay low” for the presen...

Poor Jurgis was now an outcast and a tramp once more. He was crippled⁠—he was as literally crippled as any wild animal which has lost its claws, or been torn out of its shell. He had been shorn, at on...

After breakfast Jurgis was driven to the court, which was crowded with the prisoners and those who had come out of curiosity or in the hope of recognizing one of the men and getting a case for blackma...

The man had gone back to a seat upon the platform, and Jurgis realized that his speech was over. The applause continued for several minutes; and then someone started a song, and the crowd took it up, ...

Jurgis had breakfast with Ostrinski and his family, and then he went home to Elzbieta. He was no longer shy about it⁠—when he went in, instead of saying all the things he had been planning to say, he ...

One of the first things that Jurgis had done after he got a job was to go and see Marija. She came down into the basement of the house to meet him, and he stood by the door with his hat in his hand, s...

Go! Go! Close the door! ↩ Z. Graiczunas, Entertainment garden. Wine. Schnapps. ↩ Author’s Note: Pronounced Yoorghis. ↩ Come here! Faster! ↩ Goodbye, my dearest flower; Goodbye to my happiness too. As ...